Jay Lee, PhD, FSME
Vice Chairman and Board Member
Foxconn Technology Group
Mason, Ohio

Jay Lee, PhD, FSME, is the founding director of the NSF I/UCRC on Intelligent Maintenance Systems, which was selected as the most economically impactful I/UCRC in the NSF Economic Impact Study Report in 2012. He is also the founding director of Industrial AI Center. Lee was on leave from UC to serve as vice chair and board member of Foxconn Technology Group during 2019-21 to lead the development of Foxconn Smart Manufacturing Science Park (~$1B investment) in Mt. Pleasant, Wisconsin. He is a member of the Global Future Council on Advanced Manufacturing and Production of the World Economics Council and Board of Governors of the Manufacturing Executive Leadership Council of the National Association of Manufacturers. On two occasions, Lee has been featured in SME’s Smart Manufacturing magazine, first as one of the 30 Visionaries Merging the Cyber and Physical Worlds and second as one of the 20 most influential professors in smart manufacturing. His new book on Industrial Artificial Intelligence was published by Springer in 2020. SME Member Since 1999

Vesna Cota
Founder & Principal
VMMI
Markham, Ontario

Vesna Cota is the founder of VMMI and an additive manufacturing specialist. She spent almost 30 years working in automotive product development with Tyco Electronics Canada ULC, a TE Connectivity Co. Cota currently serves on the board of directors for NSERC-CFI Strategic Network for Holistic Innovation in Additive Manufacturing, the Canadian ISO/TC261 Additive Manufacturing Standards Committee and the TCT Expert Advisory Board. She is a longstanding advisor for SME’s RAPID + TCT event, Canadian Manufacturing Technology Show (CMTS) and FABTECH Canada. Cota also served as an advisor for SME’s Additive Manufacturing Community from 2007-16 and was a representative on the SME Member Council from 2018-21. She has been active in the additive manufacturing community since the early 1990s and is a relentless promoter of additive manufacturing in Canada. SME Member Since 1995

SME Albert M. Sargent Progress Award
Recognizes significant accomplishments in the field of manufacturing processes, methods or systems.

Yuebin Guo, PhD, FSME, is currently the Henry Rutgers professor of advanced manufacturing at Rutgers University-New Brunswick. He previously served as the assistant director for research partnerships at the Advanced Manufacturing National Program Office during 2017-18. Guo was a professor of mechanical engineering and served as the director of the Consortium for Surface Integrity and Functionality at the University of Alabama from 2009-18. In 2011, he was the Humboldt visiting professor in WZL and Fraunhofer IPT at Aadchen in Germany. Guo’s research focuses on manufacturing processes, surface integrity and functionality, physics-informed machine learning, AI manufacturing and digital twin with 300+ publications. He was selected as an ASME Swanson fellow and a Tau Beta Pi Outstanding Faculty. Guo has also received the NSF CAREER Award, the SME Outstanding Young Manufacturing Engineer Award and the SAE Ralph R. Teetor Educational Award. He is a fellow of SME, ASME and CIRP. SME Member Since 2002

Donald C. Burnham Manufacturing Management Award
Recognizes exceptional success in the integration of the infrastructure and processes of manufacturing through innovative use of human, technical and financial resources.

Lisa Strama 
President and CEO
The National Center for Manufacturing Sciences
Ann Arbor, Michigan

Lisa Strama is president and CEO of The National Center for Manufacturing Sciences, a leader in establishing and executing programs for increasing U.S. manufacturing global competitiveness through the acceleration of technology transfer. She has extensive and diverse leadership experience spanning functional roles responsible for large-scale manufacturing, product delivery, sales, infrastructure improvements and for bringing cross industry supply chain organizations together to fill technology gaps through the latest innovation. Strama serves on multiple boards for furthering manufacturing and operations. She holds an advanced degree and certifications. Strama is published on numerous topics regarding technology enablers and trends for our nation’s industrial base. SME Member Since 2020

SME Education Award
Honors the educator most respected for the development of manufacturing-related curricula, fostering sound training methods or inspiring students to enter the profession of manufacturing.

David E. Hardt, PhD, FSME
Ralph E. and Eloise F Cross Professor of Mechanical Engineering
Massachusetts Institute of Technology 
Cambridge, Massachusetts

The teaching and research of David Hardt, PhD, FSME, have been focused on manufacturing process control and design. His research has addressed diverse processes from welding and sheet forming to polymer microembossing and microcontact printing, and most recently, large-scale additive manufacturing. He has served as director of the MIT Laboratory for Manufacturing and Engineering, co-director for the MIT Leaders for Manufacturing, and as associate department head and graduate officer in the Mechanical Engineering Department. Hardt ran the Singapore MIT Alliance Program on Manufacturing, which led to the creation of the Master of Engineering in Advanced Manufacturing Degree Program. Most recently, he headed the development of a MicroMaster credential on the EdX platform in the “Principles of Manufacturing,” which has awarded more than 4,700 course certificates in the first three years of operation. Hardt currently serves on the Technical Advisory Board of two companies: Industrial ML and MyTide Therapeutics. SME Member Since 2000

SME Frederick W. Taylor Research Medal
Honors significant published research leading to a better understanding of materials, facilities, principles, operations and their application to improve manufacturing processes.

I.S. Jawahir, PhD, FSME, is a professor of Mechanical Engineering, James F. Hardymon chair in manufacturing systems and the founding director of the Institute for Sustainable Manufacturing at the University of Kentucky. His current research includes predictive modeling and optimization of manufacturing processes. Jawahir has published extensively, including over 155 journal papers, been awarded four U.S. patents, delivered 72 keynote papers at international conferences and over 150 invited presentations in 38 countries. He is a fellow of CIRP, ASME and SME; editor-in-chief of the International Journal of Sustainable Manufacturing; and a technical editor of the Journal of Machining Science and Technology. Jawahir has been active in international collaborative research through CIRP since 1990: led five research groups; founded the CIRP Conference Series on Modeling of Machining Operations in 1998; co-founded the CIRP Conference Series on Surface Integrity in 2012; and is currently leading the IMPACT research group. He received the 2013 ASME Milton C. Shaw Manufacturing Research Medal and the 2015 William Johnson International Gold Medal. SME Member Since 1980

SME Gold Medal
Recognizes outstanding service to the manufacturing engineering profession in technical communications through published literature, technical writings or lectures.